Jack Vance & the D&D Game

Article for Profantasy – c. 2,400 words JACK VANCE & THE D&D GAME By Gary Gygax © 2001 Gary Gygax All rights reserved. It was by reading BIG PLANET in a pulp science fiction magazine that I first became acquainted with Jack Vance as an author. Mark you, at that time, the early 1950s, I was so avidly following imaginative fiction that I often read two book or pulp magazines a day. Of course, on days I had lots of things to do I could manage only one book, or even just a short tale, but that’s a different story… Back to this one, after finishing the BIG PLANET yarn, I decided that Jack Vance was one of my favorite authors, one of maybe 50 or so that I thought were “tops”. My list narrowed considerably as I matured, so that by the 1960s, the writers for whose work I actually looked for was down to about a dozen. Lo and behold, I found a new novel by Jack Vance then. As a matter of fact I have that very book now. THE EYES OF OVERWORLD published by Ace Books, Inc. in 1966 absolutely enthralled me as no work of fantasy had done for a long time. To my mind Cugel the Clever was just the sort of anti-hero that the genre needed. What a delight to get to know this fellow—from a safe distance—and read of his misadventures and less-than-ethical exploits! Later, when I picked up THE DYING EARTH, I was treated to more of the same sort of fanciful tale, an environment whimsy with characters to match. Fantasy set in a far future with just familiar elements of the medieval and renaissance in the environment to make it possible to relate to the environment. The strange and demonic denizens of the Dying Earth, the even odder inhabitants and their societies, the bizarre characters, were so perfectly melded into a whole as to enable not mere suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. One just had to believe that such a place existed, or rather will exist in some millions of years time. Need I say that I am not merely a Jack Vance fan, but that he is in my opinion the very best of all the authors of imaginative fiction? Well I am and he is! When I began to add elements of fantasy to medieval miniatures wargames around 1969, of course the work of Jack Vance influenced what I did. Along with Robert E. Howard, de Camp & Pratt, A. Merritt. Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, J.R.R. Tolkien, P.J. Farmer, Bram Stoker—and not a few others, including the fairy tales Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang, and conventional mythologies—his writing was there in my memory. Happily so. What I devised was based on the fantastic creations of many previous writers, an amalgam of their imaginations and my own, and it was first published in 1971 as the CHAINMAIL Medieval Miniatures Rules, the “Fantasy Supplement” thereto. Not much later, in 1972, I wrote the first draft of what was later to become the first commercial Role-Playing Game, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, published in January, 1974. Just what portions of these works, the subsequent AD&D game, stemmed from inspiration related to the writing of Jack Vance? Several elements, the unquestioned foremost being the magic system used in these games. To my way of thinking, the concept of a spell itself being magical, that its written form carried energy, seemed a perfect way to balance the mage against other types of characters in the game. The memorization of the spell required time and concentration so as to impart not merely the written content but also its magical energies. When subsequently cast—by speaking or some other means—the words or gestures, or whatever triggered the magical force of the spell, leaving a blank place in the brain where the previously memorized spell had been held. Because I explained this often, attributing its inspiration to Jack Vance, the D&D magic system of memorized then forgotten spells was dubbed by gamers “the Vancian magic system”. Of the other portions of the A/D&D game stemming from the writing of Jack Vance, the next most important one is the thief-class character. Using a blend of “Cugel the Clever” and Roger Zelazny’s “Shadowjack” for a benchmark, this archetype character class became what it was in original AD&D. Also some of the spells and magic items found in the game were inspired from one or another of Jack Vance’s works. Notable are the Imprisonment and Evard’s Black Tentacles spells. The latter was devised after reading the short story, “The Bagful of Dreams” in FLASHING SWORDS #4 published in 1977—not in time for my work on the Player’s Handbook but added to it later in the Unearthed Arcana supplement. Did I mention the Robe of Eyes? Ah, and who can forget the Ioun Stones magical items. Before actually publishing the latter, I consulted with the creator, of course, to get permission. That wasn’t difficult, for some considerable time previously I had written a fan letter to Jack, received a reply, written back, etc. Somewhere buried in one of many file cabinets stored in my basement is a folder with quite a few pieces of correspondence from Mr. Vance. As a matter of fact, we had hoped to have him as the Guest of Honor for an early GenCon, but at that time his appearance fee was a bit beyond TSR’s budget. He was very gracious when I spoke to him about being a Guest of Honor. Jack told me frankly that he was not particularly comfortable in such a role, mentioning that the fans, “seem to think that I should have little green horns growing from my forehead or something…” In retrospect, I believe that the Good Mr. Vance just didn’t understand the awe in which his fans hold him, was not at ease with the adulation given to him. Anyway, later on when I got in touch about the Ioun Stones, permission was graciously given, and so a new and unique set of magical items was added to the AD&D game. Indeed, what mage did not long for those 14 different colors and shapes to be circling his head? Mordenkainen, my own chief spellcaster PC, went on many a harrowing expedition searching for them, eventually wound up with an even dozen. What did the creator of the concept for these marvelous magical stones ask in return for adding them to the game? Only what I was planning to do in any event, mention his books in the work. Not only is Jack Vance a great author, but he is a very nice guy too. Aside from ideas and specific things, the very manner in which Jack Vance portrays a fantasy environment, the interaction of characters with that environment, and with each other, is so captivating that wherever I could manage it, I attempted to include the “feel” he brings to his fantasy tales in the AD&D game. My feeble ability likely managed to convey but little of this, but in all I do believe that a not a little of what fans consider to be the “soul” of the game stems from that attempt. Of course there were, as noted, a number of other authors who had considerable influence on what I wrote, so let it suffice to conclude that in all a considerable debt of gratitude is owned to Mr. Vance, one that I am always delighted to repay whenever the opportunity arises. It should go without saying that whenever I see a new title of his, I buy it and read it with avid pleasure. Years past when I was doing that, reading one of Jack’s SF novels, I came upon a “Lord Gygax” therein. I immediately phoned and complained that I was had not appeared as a vicious “Starmeter”, merely a luckless noble. Mr. Vance turned a deaf ear to my implorations, and sadly “Lord Gygax” has never returned in some greater and more adventurous role in his stories. Drat! Now that would be what I consider as real fame…. To spice up my own D&D campaign back in 1974 I added a number of special “dimensional portals” so that players might enjoy adventures in strange places that were different from the “everyday” realms of fantasy. The favorite of the players was one drawn whole from a series of SF novels written by Jack Vance, and through play therein futuristic weapons were brought into play against sea monsters and trolls, the various dangerous critters of dungeon and wilderness in the D&D world. How sad the players when these weapons their PCs possessed ran out of energy… As influential as Mr. Vance was in inspiring what went into the work that became ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, the game I created was not meant to reflect, let alone recreate, his, or any other fiction author’s, own world or worlds. Clearly, the AD&D game was designed to accommodate a wide variety of fantasy concepts. The game and the environment I devised for play were written so as to serve many different tastes and styles, and in this it seems to have succeeded quite well. In doing that I used myth and legend, ancient and medieval historical bases, even some aspects of the Renaissance. To the delight of his many readers, Jack Vance is so creative as to devise entirely unique and wholly wondrous environments.

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